Relatively low taxes have kept pump prices far below most otherdeveloped nations, which some say is precisely why the current runupis so painful.snip--------------------------------------------------------------

TV ads for who should be our new president are popping up everywhere.Too bad we can't spend some of that ad money on more worthwhile endeavors.- LRK -

If I haven't bothered you with enough noise and you have the time,maybe gather some inspiration from watching some of the TED Talksagain.At least take a look at a quick summary of 10 of the talks and thencheck out the information below.- LRK -

With 50 million views since we started posting video two years ago,TEDTalks have become a powerful cultural force.

To celebrate this milestone, we're releasing a never-before-seen list:the Top 10 TEDTalks of all time, as of June 2008.

With speakers like neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor and global healthexpert Hans Rosling, the list proves one of the compelling ideasbehind TEDTalks: that an unknown speaker with a powerful idea canreach -- and move -- a global audience through the power of qualityweb video. Links to all 10 talks are found below the video window --or browse through our Top 10 TEDTalks Theme. Even if you've seen themall, the highlights video below is darn fun.

We passed an important milestone this week at TED, and wanted to shareit with you: 50 million TED talks have now been viewed worldwide,nearly half of them outside the U.S. To keep pace with demand, we'renow releasing a new talk every weekday. (Today, be sure to watchBoston Philharmonic conductor Benjamin Zander, who was a huge hit atthis year's TED conference).

To celebrate two years and 50 million TED talks, we're releasing forthe first time the list of the Top 10 TED talks (below). These are thetalks that have proven most popular over time, and -- interestingly --they mainly feature speakers who were little-known before their talkwas released. (The most popular talk, viewed 2 1/2 million times andcounting, features neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor, who observed herown stroke while it was happening.)

Even -- or especially -- if you've seen all these talks, thehighlights video is well worth a watch. And if you're outraged thatyour personal favorite isn't yet the most popular, drop us a note.Perhaps it will make our upcoming round up of "Hidden Gems" ...

Now we have other nations working to put humans in space.It will be interesting to see what they use for space suits and which ones standup the riggers of working on the Moon.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_suit

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Space shuttle Discovery and its crew landed at11:15 a.m. EDT Saturday, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla.,completing a 14-day journey of more than 5.7 million miles in space.

The STS-124 mission was the second of three flights to launchcomponents to the International Space Station to complete the JapanAerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory. Discovery deliveredKibo's tour bus-sized Japanese Pressurized Module, or JPM, which isthe station's largest module. The mission included three spacewalksto install and outfit the JPM and activate its robotic arm system.The lab's logistics module, which was delivered and installed in atemporary location in March, was attached to its permanent positionon top of the JPM.

STS-124 was the 123rd space shuttle flight, the 35th flight forshuttle Discovery and the 26th flight of a shuttle to the station.

With Discovery and its crew safely home, the stage is set for thelaunch of STS-125 on October 8. Atlantis' mission will return thespace shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope for one last visit beforethe shuttle fleet retires in 2010. Over 12 days and five spacewalks,Atlantis' crew will make repairs and upgrades to the telescope,preparing it for at least another five years of research.

For more about the STS-124 mission and the upcoming STS-125 mission,visit:

WASHINGTON -- NASA has awarded a contract to Oceaneering InternationalInc. of Houston, for the design, development and production of a newspacesuit system. The spacesuit will protect astronauts duringConstellation Program voyages to the International Space Station and,by 2020, the surface of the moon.

"The award of the spacesuit contract completes the spaceflighthardware requirements for the Constellation Program's first humanflight in 2015," said Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager atNASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Contracts for the Orion crewcapsule and the Ares I rocket were awarded during the past two years.

The cost-plus-award-fee spacesuit contract includes a basicperformance period from June 2008 to September 2014 that has a valueof $183.8 million. During the performance period, Oceaneering and itssubcontractors will conduct design, development, test, and evaluationwork culminating in the manufacture, assembly, and first flight ofthe suit components needed for astronauts aboard the Orion crewexploration vehicle. The basic contract also includes initial work onthe suit design needed for the lunar surface.

"I am excited about the new partnership between NASA and Oceaneering,"said Glenn Lutz, project manager for the spacesuit system at Johnson."Now it is time for our spacesuit team to begin the journey togetherthat ultimately will put new sets of boot prints on the moon."

Suits and support systems will be needed for as many as fourastronauts on moon voyages and as many as six space stationtravelers. For short trips to the moon, the suit design will supporta week's worth of moon walks. The system also must be designed tosupport a significant number of moon walks during potential six-monthlunar outpost expeditions. In addition, the spacesuit and supportsystems will provide contingency spacewalk capability and protectionagainst the launch and landing environment, such as spacecraft cabinleaks.

Two contract options may be awarded in the future as part of thiscontract. Option 1 covers completion of design, development, test andevaluation for the moon surface suit components. Option 1 would beginin October 2010 and run through September 2018, under acost-plus-award fee structure with a total value of $302.1 million.

Option 2 provides for the Orion suit production, processing andsustaining engineering under a cost-plus-award fee or afirm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contractstructure with a maximum value of $260 million depending on hardwarerequirements. Option 2 would begin at the end of the basicperformance period in October 2014, and would continue throughSeptember 2018.

Images and animation of the new designs, as well as more informationabout NASA's Constellation Program, are available online at:

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Ron Wells asked me if I knew of any documents that described the "LunarEllipsoid"

Not knowing what that was sent me on a search with Google and my, my,just where you are on the Moon might depend on what you use for yourreference as to the shape of the Moon and what mapping system you haveagreed to abide by.

It will really help to be on the same map when we decide to touch downand set up a lunar base camp.

It is also nice to know how high the mountain is that you come overwhile trying to set down in some valley. Not so much fun to strike yourlanding gear on a mountain peak while looking over your shoulder- LRK -.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will be going to the Moon and taking alot of pictures and measurements. For those to be interpreted here backon Earth one needs to be talking about the same coordinate system.

1.0 PURPOSEThe purpose of this White Paper is to provide a summary onthe planned Lunar Coordinate System that will be used forthe Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission for operationaltargeting,interdisciplinary science, and communication amongfuture and ongoing US and international lunar missions. Thesame system will be used for all LRO data products archivedin the Planetary Data System (PDS).snip------------------------------------------------------------

Summary: The primary purpose of this document is to provide a singlesource for the constants and models to be used in the trajectory andnavigation design of missions whose objective is to orbit or land on theMoon. A secondary objective is to provide the mission analyst with somebasic background information about the Moon, its orbit, and the previousmissions that have explored the Moon. As a result, this documentcontains more information than the typical constants and modelsdocument. Some of the data are required for mission studies while otherdata are simply provided for "educational purposes". This documentprovides only brief descriptions of the constants and models. The usershould consult the references if more detailed information is desired.Format: PDFLink: download herehttp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/dat/lunar_cmd_2005_jpl_d32296.pdf (82 page, 24.3 MB)

---------------------------------------The best current representationof the shape of the Moon is shown in Fig. 1a. Thefield is Goddard Lunar Topography Model-2 (GLTM-2), a72nd degree and order spherical harmonic expansion of lunarradii derived from the ~73,000 valid Clementine lidarrange measurements. The GLTM-2 model has an absolutevertical accuracy of ~100 m and a spatial resolution of 2.5Â°(76 km at the equator). The model shows that the Moon canbe represented as a sphere with maximum positive and negativedeviations of ~8 km, both occurring on the farside, inthe areas of the Korolev and South Pole-Aitken Basins.---------------------------------------

The Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) provides NASAplanetary flight projects and NASA funded professional planetaryresearchers an information system named "SPICE" to assist scientists inplanning and interpreting scientific observations from space-borneinstruments. SPICE is also widely used in engineering tasks associatedwith planetary missions.

SPICE is focused on solar system geometry. The SPICE system includes alarge suite of software, mostly in the form of subroutines, thatcustomers incorporate in their own application programs to read SPICEfiles and to compute derived observation geometry, such as altitude,lattitude/longitude, and lighting angles. SPICE data and software may beused within many popular computing environments. The software is offeredin FORTRAN, C, IDLÂ® and MATLABÂ®

NAIF serves as the "Navigation Node" of NASA's Planetary Data System,archiving and providing the science community access to SPICE data fromNASA missions.